Opinion
Joe Biden’s fraught mission of deterrence
The US president’s Middle East trip just got more complicated. But his calculus remains the same: to pull the region back from the brink of a major conflict.
James CurranInternational EditorThe chaos for President Joe Biden began at Andrews Airforce base moments before his take-off for Israel, when news filtered through of a missile strike on a hospital in Gaza.
It meant his journey into the mounting fury of the Middle East assumes not only a higher level of personal risk, but that America’s diplomatic strategy faces more turbulence. Still, despite the inevitable criticism of his trip, he was right to go.
Joe Biden boards Air Force One at Andrews Airforce base on his way to Israel. Bloomberg
The trip is worth the effort even if that means a presidential mission of deterrence suddenly got a lot more complicated. And what comes out of it will only be apparent once Biden heads back to Washington.
Former US ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer told The New York Times that the hospital blast that killed hundreds of Palestinians put the president “in a situation I’m sure he was hoping not to face, which is walking into an even more catastrophic situation than he already was”.
“Palestinians and Arabs are not going to believe this is not Israel, and perception becomes reality”.
Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain blamed Israel for the bombing, despite the country’s emphatic denial of responsibility.
Biden’s calculus, though, has not changed. He will have to get tougher with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the same time as continuing to warn others against involvement in the conflict and therefore escalation.
More problematic
The so-called “axis of resistance” to Israel is now, thanks to Iran, a more tightly woven regional quilt comprising Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
Biden was originally scheduled to visit Jordan as well, but his meetings with Arab leaders were called off as he was leaving Washington, as outrage swept the Middle East over the hospital bombing. His only stop now is Israel, meaning the mission becomes more problematic, as he tries to avoid the optics that the trip is primarily about supporting Israel.
The American hand is further declared by the presence of two US battle carrier fleets, the preparation of 2000 US troops for a potential deployment to support Israel, and the involvement of US Special Operation forces to assist in locating and freeing hostages taken by Hamas.
All this comes as no surprise given America’s staunch support for Israel from the moment of its creation in 1948.
But if Biden cannot pull Israel and other regional players back from the brink, especially Iranian-backed Hezbollah, he at least needs to be able to show he has achieved safe passage for foreign nationals out of Gaza, and ideally some progress towards freeing the hostages.
We are also again being exposed vividly here to the limits of intelligence. And not only whether Iran had prior knowledge of the horror about to be unleashed by Hamas. The Americans must surely have the intelligence capabilities to be able to say who is responsible for the hospital strike. And if so, they should.
That key capital markets remain relatively calm – for the moment at least – amid this swirling regional hotbed is itself remarkable.
Their verdict for the moment appears to be that Israel may well wait this out, with what one analyst called a surgical strike on Hamas leaders in the mould of Israel’s response to the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
The problem, of course, is that other regional players might not be so content to allow Israel any rest, thus seizing the moment to cause a far broader geopolitical catastrophe.
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